


HSO Bonus Round Collection

by Ember_Keelty



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-28
Updated: 2011-09-20
Packaged: 2017-10-23 03:39:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/245903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ember_Keelty/pseuds/Ember_Keelty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short pieces I wrote for the bonus rounds of the Homestuck Shipping Olympics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. we all got wood and nails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Round 2B: FST Challenge
> 
> Little Lion Man - Mumford & Sons  
> Almost Human - Voltaire  
> Hero - Regina Spektor  
> Jesus Christ - Brand New  
> Louder Than Thunder - The Devil Wears Prada

            In his final moment, she stops time.

            “Hello again, old friend,” he says.  Though he’s clearly trying to keep his voice mild, it is weak and warped with pain.  Her magic does not cool the irons.  It could, if she wanted it to, but she isn’t here to be kind.  “I suppose you’ve come to me with one last temptation.”

            “Not the sort you imagine,” she tells him.

            “I don’t need to be saved.”

            “You won’t be.”  She says nothing else, just floats before him and waits for him to crack.

            Eventually, he does.  “What do you _want_?” he snaps at her.

            “The better question is,” she says, as though it were really a question at all, as though she didn’t already know the answer to what she was about to ask, as though she would even ask it if she didn’t, “what do _you_ want?  I am here to grant your last request.  I will not change your fate or the fates of your followers, but anything else is yours for the wishing.  Consider it compensation for the role you have played in the Vast Plan.”

            He hesitates.  Of course he hesitates.  He is smart enough to know that this is a trap, but his heart’s desire must seem to him such a small and harmless thing that he can’t imagine how it could spring it.

            “I want,” he says, speaking slowly at first, but with more and more urgency as he goes on, “the truth.  I want the truth about my visions and the world that they showed me.  I want to know the full purpose behind my life, and my teachings, and my death.”

            “Granted.”  She lays a hand upon his sweat-drenched head.  When she reaches in, she gives him nothing.  All she does is take away the blocks and barriers that have protected him his whole life and feels him crumble under the avalanche of realization.

            “My fault,” he whispers.

            “Yes,” she says simply, but he only stares vacantly past her.

            “My fault,” he repeats, louder now, more substantial.  “The lost world I spoke of, the paradise I strove to return to our people…  All this time, it was the world _I_ destroyed.”

            “ _We_ destroyed it,” she corrects him.

            “We..?”  His eyes refocus on her, and fill first with recognition, then with dawning anger.  “Oh, God.  It’s _you_.  Why would you do this to me?  We were _friends._ ”

            Just for a moment, he looks and sounds so much like the boy she used to know.  She allows herself to embrace him.  It isn’t kindness — after how much she has hurt him, she knows he will get no comfort from it — but it isn’t cruelty either.  It is simply something she is taking for herself.

            “Because I have been used just like you have,” she says, and she knows that he is close enough to feel the unquenchable green fire that roars beneath her skin.  “Because I am burning too.”

            With those last words, she leaves him, simply vanishes from his sight.  Time starts again, and the Sufferer screams.


	2. and start to feel mortality surround me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Round 2B: FST Challenge
> 
> The Clocks Were Asleep - Regina Spektor  
> Locked In a Room - Oren Lavie  
> Music Box - Regina Spektor

            “It wants _out_?” Rose asks.

            “She,” says Jade.

            “Am I meant to understand, then, that ‘she’ has exhibited a drive for preservation of self beyond the confines of the game in which she exists as a construct?”

            “Yes,” says Jade.

            Rose suddenly recalls when her early attempts at inducing lucid dreaming to cure her chronic nightmares resulted one night in the character of an old woman grabbing hold of her hand and saying, _Don’t wake up.  I don’t want to die._ She has always remembered the anecdote with such fond fascination that she all but forgot just how completely fucking horrifying it had been at the time.

            “Maybe she isn’t a game construct,” she muses, more to herself than to Jade.  “Maybe she’s a Horrorterror.”

            “Oh, no!” Jade assures her.  “She’s way too nice for that!  I can’t stand those things — no offense.  She’s just like the Consorts of the Lands and the people with exoskeletons on Derse and Prospit.”

            Rose glances out of the corner of her eye at the violet city beyond her tower window.  “That’s… more than commonly disturbing.”

            “Um, I don’t really know why it’s disturbing, exactly, but it’s pretty near impossible!  So I thought, since you’re the one who was all about breaking the game, that I should take a nap and ask you about it.”

            Rose feels a sudden surge of resentment for the other girl.  They were never close, not like John and Dave, but after everything that’s happened she has to wonder at the fact that Jade can even look her in the eye.  “So it wasn’t just to say good bye, then?  Pay your respects, make your amends, maybe even try to make me reconsider?  Don’t get me wrong,” she continues quickly when she sees the devastation start to rise to the surface of her friend’s face — because Jade _is_ her friend, even if not a close one.  Rose can’t afford to forget that, not now of all times.  “It’s actually very pleasant to have some company that doesn’t degenerate into melodramatics.”

            “Rose—”

            “Are they real people?” Rose asks, cutting her off.  “The Denizens and Consorts and such?  You were awake among them for longer than any of us.”

            Jade looks surprised.  “Of course they’re real!  What did you think?”

            She thought exactly what she needed to think to do what she needed to do, but that doesn’t matter anymore.  Nothing about her own life or choices or wishes or regrets matters anymore.  What matters is her friends, and their guardians, and the trolls, and whatever passes for theirs, and anyone else who might be caught in the gears of this abominable machine, stuck moving along tracks and in circles like wind-up figures in a music box or Swiss clock.  What matters is smashing it to pieces, whatever else gets smashed along with it.

            So she says:  “I think I may have a plan for you.”


	3. light of your deepest devotions

She stares him down as he levels the gun and doesn’t question whether it’s shock or courage or simply despair that fills her with such strange serenity.  _So this, at last, is how it all ends_ , she thinks, and feels no fear of her own.  Mindfang’s fear, though, grips hold of her brain and pulls like cords about her limbs.  The Marquise shouts directly into her nervous system, all subtlety cast to the ocean winds:  _Move!  Move, you foolish little thing!  Don’t you forsake me, my darling, don’t you dare, don’t you d8re!_

The Dolorosa meets her halfway and jerks to the side just as Dualscar pulls the trigger.  There’s a blinding flash, and she crumples to the deck, clutching with one hand at the hole above her hip to keep her vital organs from spilling out.  Her other hand is gone, vaporized along with everything attached to it up to the shoulder.

“So she wwas a wworthy sort after all,” she hears Dualscar say, and knows that she must be lying in a pool of jade.  His words, along with the searing pain all down her side, stir the ashes of long burnt-out anger somewhere deep within her.  As though during her years in the caverns she had not seen wigglers from across the hemospectrum fair just alike in failing or succeeding to prove their worth in the Trials.  As though having something closer to blue than to yellow running through her veins made her good enough to be “worth” raping.  As though Maglen and Psimon and _her own child_ had been somehow less than she is, as though any one of them weren’t worth more than him and the Marquise combined.

When her vision clears, she sees that Mindfang almost managed to reach her before Dualscar reset the gun’s sights on her and forced her to halt.  He won’t kill her, the Dolorosa knows, and more’s the pity.  This is all childish posturing from both of them, and she, as always, is caught in the middle.

She is so inexpressibly tired of that.

The Dolorosa forces herself onto her feet.  Dualscar takes aim at her again, but the moment he’s distracted, Mindfang rushes him with her sword.  She knows this without turning to look, deduces it from the sounds of shouts and clanging metal as she staggers away from them both.  When she reaches the railing, she throws herself against it, cantilevering over the waves in an attempt to conscript gravity to her cause.  She doubts she has the strength left to pull herself up.

“Oh, my darling, no!” the Marquise calls to her.  “You must not do that, you poor silly thing!  I’ll have you mended up good as new, don’t you worry your pretty little head!”

That’s a lie.  If they were in a city with a proper hospital she might stand a fair chance, but out here in the middle of the ocean, all that medical care can do is draw her death out.  She knows what Mindfang really wants, because she finds herself wanting it as well.  _Wouldn’t it be nice_ , she thinks, _to be held as I die?  Wouldn’t I feel safe and comforted in the arms of the woman who loves me?  It wouldn’t have to hurt at all; she can cut off my mind from my body if only I let her in just a few steps further, if only I open my heart to her completely…_

She digs her mental heels into the pain.  _That_ is real.  _That_ is what Mindfang has done to her with her “love.”  The Marquise is a monster who has no right to even utter the word, and she will _never_ know what it is to care for another more than for her own self.

“Signless,” the Dolorosa whispers, and finds within herself the power to lean just a little bit harder.  For a moment her shoulder simply slides down along the outer edge of the rail, then her heels flip over her head and she falls, free from friction, free from everything.  The Marquise screams, but in seconds the Dolorosa plunges into the thickness of the sea, where all is silence.

The salt in her wounds burns like hot iron, and the water washes her clean.


	4. the sky in its blue glory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round 3A: Companion Pieces
> 
> Based on [Emotional Chemistry](http://hso-extras.livejournal.com/8907.html) by contentmint.

For Rose the last straw came when Jade did a goddamn _barrel roll_ and shouted for her to do the same. Instead, she pulled up short. “This doesn’t seem like a particularly effective training regimen,” she observed.

Instead of braking and turning around like a normal person, Jade looped upside-down and flew back to her invertedly. Her black hair hung limp and wild behind her head, like a massive clump of inky-colored moss cascading from the lip of a cliff. Rose wondered how she kept it from getting in her way during battle, and could only conclude it was with yet another entirely frivolous use of her magic.

“Oh no,” Jade giggled. “Did you really think I meant we were going to be training? I was trying to do that insincerity thing you do! I guess I still need to work on it.”

“Well, you did seem slightly less effervescently earnest than usual,” Rose conceded. “But was I really meant to understand that you were inviting me on something as adolescent as a joyride?”

“Why not?” Jade asked, casually rolling over into an upright position. “We _are_ adolescents!”

“By the biological definition, perhaps, but not the cultural one. We’re warriors, Jade. We don’t have the luxury of gradually maturing through a bumbling series of charmingly awkward misadventures. If we fuck up, we don’t get a heartwarming lesson succinctly recapitulated at the end of the episode. We just get shot out of the air.”

“Well, duh,” said Jade. “Even if we do our best, we could still die tomorrow. Why do you think I’m always so eager to do fun, silly things like this with you?”

A soft, cold wind swirled suddenly around them. Maybe that, Rose thought, was what lifted the hairs on the back of her neck and sent a chill down her spine.

“Rose,” Jade asked, “why did you become a magical girl?”

“Sometimes I wonder about that myself.” _What if it really was just to prove myself to my mother?_ “I think perhaps I was tired of attempting to be normal, of living an average life among average people and pouring most of my energy into trying not to stand out. I wanted something more meaningful than that.”

“I do it because I love it,” said Jade.

“What part of it?”

“All of it! Helping people, having magic, flying, and also…” Her face flushed a little, but it might just have been the wind chapping it. “Well, I’m really glad that I got to meet you!”

Hesitantly, haltingly, Rose held out one gloved hand. Jade practically lunged to clasp it between both of hers. The wind picked up, and Jade’s hair flared out behind her like the wings of a great black bird. Looking at her, Rose felt a similar stirring and unfurling deep within her chest.

“Okay,” Jade said after a minute or so, when the wind died down again. “ _Now_ do a barrel roll.”


End file.
